Margot Rochester - Earthly Delights: Gardening by the Seasons the Easy Way

Earthly Delights

Gardening by the Seasons the Easy Way

MARGOT ROCHESTER

Copyright 2004 by Margot Rochester
First Taylor Trade Publishing edition 2004

This Taylor Trade Publishing hardcover edition of Earthly Delights is an original publication. It is published by arrangement with the author.

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

Published by Taylor Trade Publishing
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200
Lanham, Maryland 20706

Distributed by National Book Network

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rochester, Margot, 1935
Earthly delights : gardening by the seasons the easy way /
Margot Rochester.1st Taylor Trade Pub. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-58979-078-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-58979-078-0
1. Gardening. I. Title.
SB453.R625 2004
635.9dc22

2003023783

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America.

In memory of my mother,
Margot Peyser McAuliffe,
who should have had time to garden
19081954

This book began fifteen years ago when I sent a story about my coastal garden to the editor of the Island Breeze, a monthly newspaper on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The column was accepted for publication and I was invited to continue writing for the Breeze. And was paid to do so!

Little did that editor know that the columns would have been written without pay. Little did I know that I was beginning an adventure that continues to this day and has become one of my lifes most satisfying endeavors.

I have never lost the excitement of seeing my work in print or the feeling of surprise when strangers respond to something I write. Publication is an exhilarating and affirming experience.

Writing these columns has connected me to my garden and to other peoples gardens in an extraordinary way. I quickly realized that gardening is more than gardening. It is a process of discovery about the world and about ourselves.

On a less mystical note, a garden is, or should be, a source of inordinate joy for the gardener. When a garden becomes laborious instead of a labor of love, when joy is lost, the gardener must change herself or the garden or both.

Earthly Delights: Gardening by the Seasons the Easy Way is about the changes I have experienced over the years, both in myself and in the gardens I have tended. Because I cannot imagine life without a garden, I have spent these writing and gardening years looking for ways to garden leisurely and efficiently so that limited time and increasing age would not hinder me.

My garden is in the South because that is where I live. However, I do not regard it as a Southern garden or myself as a Southern gardener. The plants I grow are limited or enhanced by our climate, but the strategies I use and the pleasure my garden gives me have nothing to do with state lines or first frost dates.

Actually, I have two gardens. One is on a coastal island. Buffeted by wind, tides, and salt spray as well as drought, this garden keeps me humble. I might consider it a failure if I did not find something to enjoy every single time I see it.

The other garden, the one most of this book is about, wraps around the house where we have lived for forty years. The lawn and grapevines belong to my husband, but the garden is mine and it is a treasure. Few days go by when I do not stroll among the borders and beds, enjoying the changes and surprises that never cease.

In this book, I share strategies and observations as gardeners share seeds and cuttings. We offer favorite bits of our garden to friends, assuming that someday they will pass them onto others. I can think of few human activities that enable participants to connect in this remarkable way with one another and with posterity.

Regard this book as a collection of offshoots, not from my garden but from my gardening life. I hope you will be entertained and informed, but, more than anything, I hope you will discover the joy of creating your own glorious garden, the easy way.

To all the friends who have encouraged me along the way to publication, my gratitude is beyond words. They know who they are and why I love them.

I owe special thanks to readers who have stopped me in the grocery store and the post office and have called or e-mailed to tell me they liked something I had written. Writers need to be assured that their work is read.

I was a reader of garden books before I became a gardener. While still in college, I stumbled across Ruth Stouts book How to Have a Green Thumb without an Aching Back. Later I discovered Allen Lacy, who led me to Henry Mitchell and Elizabeth Lawrence, writers who introduced me to the small and grand pleasures of the garden. They not only set the standard for writing about gardens but they also let me know, before I ever picked up a trowel, that gardening was more than growing flowers and vegetables.

Of course, I am especially grateful to my editor at Taylor Publishing, Michael Emmerich, who was willing to take a chance on this late bloomer, and to Sharon Thompson, who read the manuscript three times, corrected my spelling and inaccuracies, and urged me onward.

Most of all, I am thankful to and for my husband, Dick, who, after forty-seven years, has almost adapted to my eccentricities and continually encourages me to flap my wings and see what happens. He and our sons, Tom and Dan; their wives, Cindy and Bonnie; and our grandchildren, Haley, Drew, Gray, Morgan, and Margot, will always be the greatest delights of my life.

When a garden becomes laborious instead of a labor of love,
when joy is lost, the gardener must change herself
or the garden or both.